According to Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, the author pinpoints that in radical media convergence, fans’ potentials were “marginal” to media products and consumption, and their abilities were generalized behind most “average consumers” (Henry Jenkins, 2013). Recently, diverse television transformations have extended the concept of media audiences further to connect fan cultures, proved by Netflix originals and Netflix-alike broadcasters niches a specific group or audience’s tastes: feminism, queer, transgender, races, and so force. Such controversial issues appear in almost every trending episode, for example, “Euphoria” and “Skam.”

On the one hand, curating marginal content can be perceived as a required audience strategy operated by the media industry because of competitive television distribution markets. On the other hand, I supposed the social phenomenon implied contemporary Trans TV audiences (including fans) accelerating television convergence. One example is the Norwegian teen series, “Skam,” which has been remade by different countries within native languages and contexts.

“Skam” is a four-session episode initially aired on Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation(NRK) from 2015 to 2017. The series of stories happened in one of West End Oslo high schools and concerned with an intensive character and their daily life per season. In contrast to the binge-watching model, the “Skam” distribution observes linear scheduling, in which the break time between each episode is seven days. Instead of being a sense of torture, waiting a week to view the development of the plot provides more time for the audience to discuss the story and share it with friends. 

Although the “Skam” setting is about high school teenagers, the director pays much attention to showing how young adult groups find their true selves when growing up, rather than discussing topics born in gimmicks, like drug-abuse issues. What protagonists encounter problems: loneliness, sexual orientation, religious belief, choosing life or pursuing love, seems like everyone will meet or have tackled in reality. The sense of empathy accounts for the success of the Norwegian show. 

Apart from precisely resonating with all-aged people, the director also carefully emerged fans from other media discursive. One approach is the director deploys popular songs to render the emotion or feelings, which also helps to attract fans into viewing. In season 1, episode 8, Noora sang Justin Biber’s “Baby” to relieve her friend. When the arm of Vilde Hellerud Lien supports her brother, the background music corresponds to the scene with Kanye West’s “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,”; and when a girl introduces the man of the moment to others, the song “Constantly Hating” by Young Thug faded in the scene.

Another essential feature is the average running time of an episode, around 30 minutes, with someone shorter running 15 minutes. Even though there are no strict timeline constraints, the director master the narrative rhythm more compactly compared with conventional television dramas. From the curation aspect, “Skam” follows a scheduled timetable the same as traditional offline cable shows; the series distinctly differs from them. It considers marginal groups’ interests and practices to emerge audiences from online and offline, cable and internet distribution models, TV programme consumers, and binge-watching “addicts.” 

Reference

• Jenkins, H. (2013). Textual poachers: Television fans and participatory culture. Routledge. 
• Amanda Lotz (2017), ‘Theorizing the Nonlinear Distinction of Internet-Distributed Television’, Portals: A Treatise on Internet Distributed Television, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/maize/mpub9699689/
• Michael Goddard and Christopher Hogg (2018), ‘Introduction: Trans TV as concept and intervention into contemporary television’, Critical Studies in Television 13:4: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1749602018798217
• Anamarija Horvat ‘Crossing the Borders of Queer TV: Depictions of migration and (im)mobility in contemporary LGBTQ television’, Trans TV Dossier 3, Critical Studies In Television 15: 3: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/csta/15/3 
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFgIVNEhFsc
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7YisDpc75k
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCckZLP5EJpZbWLgVKaF0AXQ

Duan Huaijiang 29/11/2022